Leading Responsibly: Relevance of the Major Leadership Theories in the Caribbean Context

Abstract

We examined the relevance of several leadership approaches in the Caribbean region to inform the current leadership practice in a number of sectoral domains (e.g. private, public, NGO). Using primarily a quantitative survey approach, we studied the relevance of transformational, transactional, authoritative, adaptive, servant, values-based, and spiritual leadership styles. Specifically, we explored each of the major leadership style’s application to the organizational (private, public and NGOs), political, religious, community and grassroots settings. The findings indicate a strong relevance of transformational leadership across a variety of work contexts in the Caribbean region with mixed and more nuanced results for other styles.